Press
reports in China suggest that sales of high-profile Chinese action-romance films for American distribution -- sales that
had, in the wake of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, been
fairly easy to broker -- are suffering because of the debacle surrounding Chen Kaige's The Promise. The experience of The Weinstein Company, which bought
the rights the the movie based on its Cannes trailer only to decide the finished product wasn't
strong enough for a wide release, has apparently given American companies cold feet about the Chinese industry in
general. In response, Zhang is opening his set up to those companies, in an effort to both sell his film and, one
imagines, re-energize the market.

It seems as if Zhang is setting his film up as a sort of litmus test to
see if Crouching Tiger and Hero-style films can
still succeed here; it'll be fascinating to see if and when The City of Golden Armor sells, and how well it
does in a possible American release.